The story which we are about to narrate dates back to the reign of George the Third; and though now sixty years since, one of the parties to the hoax then perpetrated has just made the details of the story public in a letter read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at an early meeting in the present year. The circumstances which led to the hoax being perpetrated were that, when the ruins of the eastern portion or choir of the old Abbey Church of Dunfermline were to be removed for the erection of what forms now the parish church, great anxiety was manifested to prove the truth of the statement, which, although found in the records, was to some extent believed to be doubtful, that Bruce the patriot king of Scotland was interred there. It may suffice for the purposes of the present sketch to state that the evidence that King Robert Bruce was really buried here is stated by the Rev. Peter Chalmers, in his _History of Dunfermline_, to be ‘clear, varied, and strong.’ Bruce died at Cardross in Dumbartonshire in 1329; and although he had confided to his faithful follower Sir James Douglas the task of conveying his heart to the Holy Land, Dunfermline was chosen by himself as his place of sepulture. Mr Chalmers quotes various entries in the Chartulary of Dunfermline in support of this; while in Barbour’s famous poem the king is spoken of as having been laid In a fayr tumb, intill the quer. In Fordun’s _Scotichronicon_ mention is also made of Bruce being interred ‘in the middle of the choir’ of the Abbey Church. When the excavations were being made in 1818 for the erection of the new church, the operations were watched by many with great interest; and the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, in whose custody were the royal palaces, &c., took some pains to secure that the remains of the king, if found, should be properly treated. Fulfilling completely the expectations entertained, a body incased in lead was found by the excavators, occupying exactly the place which the king’s remains would be expected to do. It was inwrapped in a double casing of lead; and some fragments of gold-embroidered linen cloth were also found, shewing that here at least was the tomb of no common person. The skeleton was that of a kingly man, six feet in height, with a splendid head, and in every way worthy of Scotland’s hero. And when the body came to be examined, previous to its reinterment, it was found that the _sternum_ or breast-bone had been sawn through longitudinally from top to bottom, this being the method adopted by the anatomists of the fourteenth century to reach the heart, for separate interment. This fact and the position of the body seemed to render it all but certain that the remains were those of Bruce; but still there remained a _possibility_ of mistake.